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A STUD Y OF 
OSCAR WILDE 



By 
Walter Winston Kenilworth 

AUTHOR OF "psychic CONTROL THROUGH SELF-KNOWLESGHE, 

"thoughts on THINGS PSYCHIC," " THE LIFE 

OF THE SOUL," ETC., ETC 



4. 



R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 

18 EAST 17th STREET :: NEW YORK 



COPYRIGHT, 1912 BY 

R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 



A Study oj Oscar Wilde'' 



£CI.A319567 



a @tuD? of meat mim 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Foreword , 9 

Impressions 15 

Reflections .j 29 

Revelations 43 

Intentions 59 

Aspirations 73 

Realizations e-. 89 

Illuminations ....[. , 103 

Conclusions • 5 121 

Afterword ,,■ , 137 



FOREWOED 

The Angel of Death has already come 
and gone for the personality of Oscar 
Wilde some years since, but it has not, nor 
can it touch the immortality of his 
thought or of his soul. These are eternal, 
joyous off-shootings of the Soul of God. 
Earthly judgment may praise or censure 
the man of whom this is written, but it 
cannot interfere with the judgment of 
Him who wots of poets' ways even, verily, 
as His Very Own. And in the fulfill- 
ment of things it has come to pass that 
the present generation sanctions the 
greatness and the wisdom of Oscar 
Wilde, whom his own generation failed 
to understand. Now he is seen to have 
been the philosopher throughout, under 
the happy disguise of the dramatist, the 
artist and the satirist. And underlying 
all his literature there is now recognized 

9 



FOEEWORD 



to have been the personal greatness and 
the personal sincerity of the man. His 
life proves the text, "A prophet is not a 
prophet in his own land/' and Oscar 
Wilde felt himself more at oneness with 
his nature, it may be said, in the romantic 
atmosphere of France than in the conven- 
tion-ridden society of England at which 
he directed the analytical powxr and the 
wit of his dramatic faculties. 

That he has enriched the English lan- 
guage goes without saying. That the 
English-speaking peoples are indebted to 
him for this goes, likewise, without say- 
ing. In the light of a newer criticism 
Oscar Wilde will be seen to have also been 
the prophet of the modern social gospel. 
And in the "De Profundis'^ and in "The 
Soul of Man Under Socialism'' we have 
not only the moulder of fine sentences, 
but the heart and very soul of a man. 
Some have spoken of Oscar Wilde, saying 
that he was ever the man of attitudes and, 

10 



FOREWORD 



tliat lie posed. Verily lie was that, but 
each attitude was a poem, a perfect work 
of idealism and each pose a masterpiece 
of human life, and each attitude and each 
pose was of the genuineness and of the 
greatness of life. And all his attitudes 
and all his poses spoke more widely and 
more beautifully of the souFs existence 
and of the existence of an ideal world and 
of ideal things than do all the noisy and 
clap-trap formalities of life as it is com- 
monly lived. And they spoke also and 
more deeply of real human sincerity and 
of true human idealism. 

In the realms of art, where life is most 
real, Oscar Wilde has rendered imperish- 
able service to his age in having assisted 
it to reconstruct its theories regarding 
the meaning and functions of art. He 
read life through the beauty and reality 
of art. Art was even the medium through 
which he observed the philosophical 
world. The problems of philosophy he 

11 



FOREWORD 



accepted and interpreted as problems of 
art, and therefore solved them the easier. 
In poetry Oscar Wilde gave birth to a 
new style and, above all, to a new spirit 
and to a new method of treatment. 

But this work is to serve rather as an 
understanding of the man through a con- 
sideration of his literature. It purposes 
a revelation of the man, and it purposes 
to show that surmounting all the great- 
ness of any outward expression was the 
greatness and the genius of the man him- 
self. It is the man who concerns us ; let 
this be in the nature of an understanding! 

The Author. 



12 



Smptessifonsf 



IMPRESSIONS 

"A man should be judged, not by his caste or creed, 
The meat he eats, the vintage that he drinks; 
Not by the way he fights or loves or sins 
But by the quality of thoughts he thinks." 

Like a great flame bound by tbe dark- 
ness its own intensity cannot illumine, 
was the soul of Oscar Wilde in tbe atmos- 
phere of his own age. A soul that stood 
alone, dwelling within its own genius, 
living upon its own glory — that, indeed, 
he was. In what a great darkness did he 
go down into death ! And how true, with 
regard even unto himself, is that terrible 
summary he made of the complex person- 
ality : 

"For he who lives more lives than one 
More deaths than one must die." 

How strikingly was this applicable of 
his very own nature ! What lives he led ; 
they were a hundred or more rolled into 
one burning flame of personality. Each 

15 



IMPKESSIONS 



episode of liis varied career was, in itself, 
a life. For within him was such sensi- 
tiveness of soul and delicacy of response 
of soul that what is a day's experience to 
the soul of average vision was to him in- 
communicable worlds of pain or joy. The 
poet's nature is the nature of a thousand 
souls in one, — and Oscar Wilde was a 
poet among them. To him the ordinary 
sunset was worlds of flame, and the shin- 
ing of the moon on any common night 
was, to him, the door-way to great heav- 
ens in the spiritual repose. 

Who shall gauge the depths of any sin- 
gle soul! Who shall say of it, "in this 
motive there was genius, or in this in- 
tention there was the light of the seven 
deaths of sin." There is no judge of these 
things but Divinity; and shall any man 
proclaim himself such a judge! Who 
aspires to divinity, verily let him judge! 
Shall any man say unto another, "'Yea, 
verily, this didst thou mean; unto this 

16 



IMPRESSIONS 



pass liast tliou come in thy thought !" If 
so, indeed, let the anathema be upon him, 
— unless he be God ! Who is his brother's 
keeper in these centuries 'of sin, when 
every man stands guilty because of the 
Time's own poverty of soul! 

The rascal and the hypocrite went with 
the publican into the temple and they 
said, "Behold, O assemblies of men, who 
are greater than we! See ye not that 
we are saints!" And with folded hands 
they accepted the tithes that the fools of 
men offered them. But there came into 
the temple and unto these same assem- 
blies of men one who carried the fires of 
the Most High in his hand, and in whose 
eyes shone worlds of spiritual flame and 
upon whose brow were written, in tem- 
pestuous light the words, "Behold, I am 
the spokesman of the creation of God!" 
But these assemblies of men who live on 
small thoughts and petty standards of 
things cried out : "Get thee gone !" 5Snd 

17 



IMPRESSIONS 



therewith they took up the sacred vessels 
of the temple and the furniture thereof 
and they cast them upon the spokesman 
of God and he fell in that place, and the 
world cried out joyously, "Behold, he is 
dead!'' 

Indeed, he of whom this is written was 
a spokesman of God, for is not every poet 
the spokesman of God! And what shall 
we say of great poets! Shall they he 
judged by those standards that men set 
up — and yet, though having set them up 
in the public highways of their thought, 
nevertheless defile them for the man who 
can '^afford/^ and thus escape. O terrible, 
diabolically terrible are the standards of 
our times! Who are the judges of men? 
Aye, they who seem pious, but within 
themselves are cess-pools of iniquity. 
They wear the garments of great piety, 
but their souls are leperous. Aye, damn 
the smallness of men ! O for that Super- 
Man of whom great Friederich Nietschze 



18 



IMPRESSIONS 



dreamed ! But then these pious men and 
these same assemblies of man-fools pro- 
claimed this arch-apostle of the New Age 
a fool ! Shall the soul have any chance in 
the kingdom of the judges of men! 

Behold a great wave of light came upon 
the world, and so great was the light that 
men perceived it as darkness, but what 
cares the light for the blindness of the 
eyes of men ! Every poet is a member of 
that body of greater things for whicK 
Christ sacrificed himself upon the cross 
and for which Shelley wrote his songs. 
The Christs alone have compassion and 
they of their making, — the poets, the ar- 
tists, the musicians, — and this because 
their vision is of things beyond the com- 
mon understanding. What shall trades- 
people know of the Sun ! What shall the 
weavers of cloth know of the Weavers of 
Dreams! Shall the poet make apologies 
to men ! The embodiment of his person- 
ality in the poetry he bequeathes to the 

19 



IMPEESSIONS 



world, — is that not the explanation! 
What need for apologies! 

Oscar Wilde saw deep into the eyes of 
life, and for this reason he held with all 
philosophers that life must be lived as 
one finds it. And shall any man take 
credit unto himself for the blood that is 
in his veins because he has no tendency 
to certain lines of life! Let the race 
blame the race, but let no man blame an- 
other! In the great economy of nature, 
morality is an episode. It is the rut into 
which all average men fall. There is still 
a greater vision — and that is of the soul. 
Who has seen the soul, is he not the king 
among his fellows, is he not the man 
among men ! Whosoever has entered into 
his own soul, like the sun enters a mass 
of clouds, or like a lion enters the forest, 
or like an elephant enters the intermin- 
able jungle — let the world beware whether 
it stigmatizes him either "good'' or "bad." 
For what is goodness but a common deter- 

20 



IMPRESSIONS 



mination to leave hands off certain cus- 
toms that are not "respectable/' What 
is "respectable'' in London-town may not 
be "respectable" in Baloochistan ; or what 
was "respectable" in the world of Pericles 
or Plato may not be "respectable" in the 
world of trade-chasing Manchester. But 
it is not the fault of Baloochistan, al- 
though in our conceit we may call Baloo- 
chistan barbaric ; nor yet is it the fault of 
Pericles or Plato, although in our pre- 
sumptuous pride we claim we have tran- 
scended these kings in thought. 

"Respectability" is what one's fore- 
fathers may have done ten centuries ago, 
or it may be what average people call 
"virtue." But shall any man be limited 
down to the thought of his great, great 
ancestors, or be pent up in the narrow 
prison-house of the opinion of the crowd ! 
In this mess of a world, there is only one 
thing that is "respectable" — and everyone 
is quite agreed to this-— and that is might, 

21 



IMPRESSIONS 



It is might that makes "respectable" the 
outrages of the Congo, because their per- 
petrator lives in a king's palace and wears 
a king's livery. It is might that excuses 
the animality of multi-millionaires and 
excuses their heinous crimes on the plea 
of "eccentricities." In international af- 
fairs the word "respectability" is second- 
cousin to a cannon-ball. In private af- 
fairs "respectability" covers a host of 
secret sins, because a man has money. 

Who is not "the sinner?" Said a great 
man, "A man has his evil deeds quite in 
common with the rest of mankind, but 
his virtues stand out separately, and it 
is by his virtues that he should be 
judged." And it is by the glory of the 
light it sheds that genius should be 
judged. And of them that are dead in 
the line of genius and sanctity what trag- 
edies in sin might have been enacted. But 
the centuries have clothed their sins in 
deep forgottenness and only the light 

22 



IMPRESSIONS 



stands forth. But that is as it should be. 
For shall a man gloat constantly and for- 
ever over the sins of his fellow ! It is the 
sinner who sees the sin — and for that mat- 
ter the whole world is a sinner. 

Slow is the recognition of the world! 
Before it praises, it must erstwhile have 
blamed. It has always the nature of the 
beggar who takes without thanks. In 
fact, in most instances, it is like a thief 
who comes in the night and robs genius 
of its merit and then turns accuser on 
genius because its capacity to give has 
been exhausted. 

Genius, alone, is possessed of vision, 
but for that reason must genius suffer. 
The genius is always of the temperament 
of the redeemer. He makes the world see 
its own shams. He makes it conscious of 
its own behavior. He makes it aware of 
its own limitations. And because of this 
must genius be crucified by the sons of 
men, even as Christ was nailed to the 

23 



IMPEESSIONS 



cross. Does a new world-ghost make it- 
self present with mankind, like Wagner, 
it is despised because of the greatness of 
its message. And for the "eccentricities'' 
of genius let the race blame the race, even 
as it becomes morally blind in the ability 
to find sin under a cloth of gold. 

There were certain wise men who had 
taken up their abode in the compound of 
a temple, but seeing that men pursued 
them, they retreated into a forest, where 
they lived upon their thoughts, like the 
mountains stand upon their base. But 
the foolishness of men pursued them still. 
There were those who came unto these 
wise men, after they had discovered their 
hermitage. But the wise men saw them 
not because they had plunged into eternal 
meditation. But these foolish men caught 
hold of the sages and spoke unto them, 
"Evil men, why have you deserted socie- 
ty ?'' And then these same wise men 
turned upon their questioners like a 

24: 



IMPKESSIONS 



mountain of fire and said, "Because so- 
ciety sees in little ways and can only see 
conventions." 

But these foolisli men could not under- 
stand and they called a multitude of such, 
like unto themselves, and they cast the 
wise men into a foul dungeon where they 
perished, — but with them, likewise, per- 
ished their wisdom, so far as this foolish 
world goes. 

So did the foolish men -of the world 
come unto Oscar Wilde. They said, "Be- 
hold, thou art a sinner ! And we, who are 
not like God, condemn the sinner and not 
the sin." Therefore and in that hour they 
cast him into a prison-house and mur- 
dered his soul. 

"And every hitman heart that breaks, 
In prison-cell or yard, 
Is as that broken box that gave 
Its treasure to the lord, 
And filled the unclean leper's house 
With the scent of costliest nard." 

It is gone some years now— the soul of 
25 



IMPRESSIONS 



Oscar Wilde, escaping from the worn-out 
body that suffered the tortures of seven 
hells before it sunk down into death. Now 
the world is kinder. It has allowed his 
books to be published. It has allowed his 
plays to be staged. It has seen wisdom in 
his essays and learning in his art. Above 
all, it has seen a soul in the garment of 
his poetry. 



8Q 



iReflections 



REFLECTIONS 

Life is, after all, an experiment. Each 
man has his methods, and they are his 
own, and he alone understands them. He 
cannot communicate unto any other the 
subtle distinctions of his personality, 
those subtle shades of his feeling, that 
make him act in accordance with the in- 
stinct of certain moods. From what 
does a poem come? Is it a sub-conscious 
sensing of finer shades of physical or 
spiritual reality? Does all poetry arise 
from the depths of the soul, just as the 
Sistine Madonna appeared to Raphael 
before he embodied its spiritual beauty 
and spiritual appeal and the gentle lofti- 
ness of the Christ-child to canvas? 

In the poet, nature expresses herself 
more fully. The poet is in closer spirit- 
ual relationship to the divine sentiency 
which is nature. The most heightened in- 

29 



KEFLECTIONS 



spiration, the most brilliant flashes of 
insight, the most luminous penetration 
into the heart of things — are of the soul 
of the poet. His tread is light. His per- 
sonality moves on swiftly in the direction 
of ideal vision, just as the feet of the lover 
are quickened with speed by the thought 
OP the hope of meeting with the beloved. 

The world speaks to the poet as an 
oracle to its priest. It speaks monstrous 
realities to him. It initiates him into 
the very soul of itself. It leads him 
through ethereal forms of consciousness, 
into the splendid portico of its inner 
temple. Nature is God, and the poet is 
the priest of God. He has anointed of 
the Lord, Who is nature. Upon his soul 
is the ineffaceable mark of priesthood; 
and nature has placed upon his lips the 
seals of prophecy and eloquent insight. 

The same power that causes the sun to 
set, causes the inspiration, the vision of 
the poet. Indissolubly associated with 

30 



REFLECTIONS 



the very spiritual essence of life is the 
lieart-throbbings of the poet's career. He 
is as much a glory as the glories he in- 
terprets. His life affords as much of 
jvision, as he himself is possessed. In 
his life the spectator may read Apocal- 
yptic realities. For this reason should 
the world reflect for a long, long period 
of time, before it consigns any priest of 
poetry, any priest of nature to the silence 
and the shame and the inquities of the 
house of shame — a prison. 
! It is incalculable ingratitude to put be- 
hind the prison bars a soul that has 
dreamed larger realities into the life of 
man. However he may sin, the sin of 
torturing his soul is immeasurably great- 
er. And poor indeed, is the recompense 
of a tardy appreciation. Shall long-de- 
ferred praise be given, when the ears of 
him who has admittedly deserved praise 
have gone to ashes! 

Each man pays for his own fault ; and 
31 



REFLECTIONS 



the most awful penalty is the eonscious- 
ness of fault. How deeply did this priest 
of poetry, of whom this is written, be- 
come conscious of his own w^oe; and yet, 
underlying whatever sense of woe he 
might have felt, was the triumphant con- 
sciousness that he was divinely a poet. 
He felt his own greatness. When the 
whole world accursed him, he was stag- 
gered. Yet, in the terrible confinement of 
those prison-months when, as he says : 

"We tore the tarry rope to shreds 
With blunt and bleeding nails ; 
We rubbed the doors and scrubbed the floors, 
And cleaned the shining rails 
And rank by rank, we soaped the plank 
And clattered with the pails." 

yet, in those terrible hours we have 
glimpses of his resoluteness of soul. We 
find him heart-broken indeed, but never- 
theless conscious that his life had been a 
mission and a message. As a person, he 
had his confessions and his regrets, but 
as a man with a message, he had no apolo- 

32 



KEFLECTIONS 



gies, nor confessions, nor regrets. He 
was a man of his age and lie knew what 
brooding his own soul had experienced, 
so that man might have the glory of a 
new vision from the very depth of his 
thought. 

Some, whose spiritual sight is blind, 
have spoken of his personal testimony in 
"De Profundis'^ as insincere. They dared 
say, that even when in the despair of his 
prison experience, "he was posing." Can a 
man pose when in physical pain? Can he 
smile when he is tortured? It may be; 
but then he is like one of the Christian 
martyrs, — who sees the glory of God 
awaiting him and the gate-ways of Para- 
dise open to receive him. Can a man be 
glad in the house of shame, which is the 
prison; can he be merry when his soul is 
tortured? Can he be "artistic'^ when he 
is mad with pain? Can he "pose" when 
the whole world is watching his agony, 
when he finds himself deserted by every 

33 



EEFLECTIONS 



man — standing entirely alone and in 
shame? 

Dastard is such an accustation of in- 
sincerity against the soul of Oscar Wilde. 
Unspeakably mean is such an analysis 
of the soul of any man, but of the soul of 
a sensitive poet, whose whole thought is 
attuned to worlds of pain to which the 
common man is a stranger no words can 
describe the meanness from which such 
calumny proceeds. Or else if it is not 
meanness, it is most assuredly, to say the 
least, criminal thoughtlessness. To turn 
a happy phrase, to make a clever remark, 
to be regarded as a "remarkable" ana- 
lyzer of the soul of a poet need one go to 
such criminal lengths? 

Those who knew of Oscar Wilde in his 
last days— and they were few indeed — 
know how spiritual his nature had be- 
come. His whole personality had be- 
come transfigured. Out of the hell of his 
misfortune he emerged, — dead and for- 

34 



EEFLECTIONS 



gotten to tlie world, but lie lived in God, 
having for his earthly companions only 
his own soul and his own thought. For 
him it was Vita Nuova, the New Life. 
He had left behind him all the traffic and 
the accusation of the world, ill the calum- 
ny, all the stupid commiseration, as well, 
and stood on the foundation-ground of 
his own soul. His poem "Vita Nuova'^ 
is the key to worlds of understanding, so 
applicable is it to his own cause : 

"I stood by the unvlntageable sea 
Till the wet waves drenched face and hair with 

spray, 
The long red fires of the dying day 
Burned in the west; the wind piped drearily; 
And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee : 
*Alas !' I cried, *my life is full of pain, 
And who can garner fruit or golden grain, 
From these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!' 
My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw 
Nathless I threw them as my final cast 
Into the sea, and waited for the end. 
When lo ! a sudden glory ! and I saw 
From the black waters of my tortured past 
The argent splendour of white limbs ascend!" 

Here is the self-revealed soul of Oscar 
Wilde, weary with the pain of the world, 

35 



EEFLECTIONS 



disconsolate, grieved and in despair, — 
and yet, witlial, a surprisingly joyous 
consciousness that his life was not a fail- 
ure, that he had fulfilled a task, that he 
had carried out a mission, that he had 
given of that of which he was possessed, 
that he was "right'' with himself and with 
God. 

It became quite true of him at the end 
— that he had come to know happiness 
within himself. He once remarked, "Al 
man who is master of himself can end a 
sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleas- 
ure." This was true of him. Sorrow had 
made him ten times a thousand times 
over the master of himself. Pain makes 
everyone the master of himself, and the 
pain that was so mercilessly heaped upon 
Oscar Wilde made him conscious of many 
spiritual facts. He became deep. For- 
merly he had thought lightly of religion, 
but in the end, when he stood alone, it 
was with God that he sought peace. In 

36 



KEFLECTIONS 



the end, when the world had left him, 
God alone was with him. In the end he 
had overcome both the pleasure and the 
pain of life. His last illness brought 
agonies of suffering, but he had learned 
the uses of pain. He had become deep; 
and a strange sweetness of disposition, a 
strange reconciliation with sorrow made 
life possible for him. 

In the end he was more the philosopher 
than the artist. The joyous energy that 
characterizes all his earlier writings, the 
evident sense of pleasure and power that 
mark his dramas, with their telling anal- 
ysis of human nature, — all these left him 
in the hour of pain, and he became the 
student of the Real. The artist was trans- 
figured into the philosopher. And after 
all, perhaps the whole task of his bitter 
experience was to teach himself that he 
was more the philosopher than the artist, 
although he himself disclaimed that he 
was the serious observer that philoso- 

37 



EEFLECTIONS 



pliers are. It made liim realize that in- 
sight is deeper than art, that the intensi- 
fied artistic consciousness and vision were 
far superior to any artistic expression. 

His prison experience had taught him 
many things, among other things that, 
"Prison regulations may enforce *plain 
living,' but cannot prevent ^high think- 
ing,' nor in any way limit or contract the 
freedom of a man's soul." This is the tri- 
umph of the soul of Oscar Wilde couched 
in as many words. The sorrow, the shame, 
the deprivations, the hardships of prison 
could not stifle his soul; they could not 
kill in him the soaring of thought or the 
vision of great ideals. He was hurt, 
grievously hurt. The soul of him saw the 
depths of pain; and yet his vision was 
the steadier and the surer and the deeper 
because of it. 

"Pain is the Lord of this world, nor is 
there any one who escapes from its net," 
he said, and he spoke truthfully. But 

38 



REFLECTIONS 



tlie fires of pain, the fires of human agony 
make the greatness of man. It made the 
greatness of Oscar Wilde, and, withal, 
a greatness far beyond that of his poetry, 
far beyond that of his prose, far beyond 
that of his art, — the greatness of the man 

HIMSELF. 



-39 



Keiielations 



REVELATIONS 

If Oscar Wilde liad a message, — ^tlien, 
indeed, his very life is a revelation. He 
walked as a god through the common- 
placeness of our age. He scrutinized so- 
ciety and the culture of the times as a 
connoisseur. To him life was not com- 
plex. It was simple, and he understood 
it as an old man understands a child; it 
was a childish affair to him. But behind 
all his criticism and all his witticism was 
an element of spiritual understanding 
and a genuine, great compassion. His 
views on the doctrines of socialism came 
as the result of his study of the stifling 
conditions to self-consciousness and self- 
expression with which the poor are bur- 
dened. Behind his gay expression was 
the whole vision of this "world of pain.'' 
In fact he declared himself to be the 
prophet of pain. What more eloquent 

43 



EEVELATIONS 



testimony is there to the innate worthi- 
ness of him than his «own statement, "I 
shall be an enigma to the world of 
Pleasure, but a mouthpiece for the world 
of Pain." 

How touching in its deep consciousness 
of human life is that fine saying of his 
which shows to us the tragedies of the 
poor, "The real tragedy of the poor is 
that they can afford nothing but self- 
denial." Beneath the garment of his 
penetrating witticisms are enormous so- 
cial and spiritual realities, proving the 
man to have been possessed of keen spir- 
itual vision and of an illuminated under- 
standing of the problems of human so- 
ciety. And, best of all, as the foundation- 
ground of all his delightful literature is 
a heart-throbbing with the world's suf- 
fering. 

He was the teacher of great moral 
truths under the covering of a seeming- 
ly joyous indifference. He smiled at the 
I 44 



KEVELATIONS 



world's woe and the world's mistakes, 
but in the background — though, it may 
be, even he himself was not always 
fully conscious of it — was his oneness 
with pain and woe in all forms. It 
was pain for him to find himself iso- 
lated in his realization; it was pain 
for him to find none conscious of the 
same great realities in art of which he 
was so magnificently conscious. It was 
pain for him to find himself misunder- 
stood at all angles of his message. And 
he suffered pain because of the very big- 
ness of his ideas for which he stood. The 
most advanced social outlook was his; 
and for this he walked through worlds 
of pain, if only because to represent the 
highest thought inevitably means to be 
misunderstood and decried. It was only 
that grand indifference to all things 
which supported him in the hours of his 
intellectual solitude. He stood in a class 
by himself, and his greatest friend was 

45 



REVELATIONS 



that ^^exquisiteness" within his own 
nature which responded to the full stim- 
ulus of the greatness of his 'Own person- 
ality. 

Oscar Wilde, if anything, was real, and 
because he was so intensely real, was he 
misunderstood. To be great is to stand 
alone ; to have a glorious vision is to stand 
alone and, as he himself said, "To be 
great is to be misunderstood." Great- 
ness inevitably brings misunderstanding, 
for those who misunderstand greatness 
are always in the majority. He never 
sought the approval of the many. At one 
time he remarked, "If my work pleases 
the few I am gratified. If it does not, it 
causes me no pain. As for the mob, I 
have no desire to be a popular novelist. 
It is far too easy.'' There is the fineness 
of the man, the grandeur of the conscious- 
ness that he is alone, and that if only the 
few understand and accept him, well and 
good. His consciousness was as perfect 

46 



EEVELATIONS 



as a perfect work of art ; and lie knew of 
himself, just as few appreciate that which 
is perfect would few come to know him. 
And in this his self-pride was justified. 
^^Conceit is the privilege of the creative," 
he writes. 

Oscar Wilde uncovered the shame and 
the sham of the ^^unselfishness" of which 
the age prides itself. He saw human 
nature as it is, or as it would be, and in 
both cases he saw it as bad. But he took 
human nature, so far as he himself was 
concerned, and made spiritual realities of 
its very limitations. He was selfish be- 
cause he realized, as all men realize, 
though all men are silent about it, that 
the world is selfish. But he dignified, it 
may be said, spiritualized the meaning. 
He put it — that to live for one's self is to 
live for others as well, and that if one can 
be true to his own personal vision and 
intensify his own personal insight he 
helps others thereby in a more real and a 

47 



REVELATIONS 



more earnest sense tlian if he were the 
greatest philanthropist. 

And for the matter of that he regarded 
all philanthropy as so much meddling 
with the affairs of others, and charity as 
the instigator of numerous sins. He saw 
in so-called unselfishness the enforced 
necessity most men feel of doing the least 
that one can and heralding to the skies 
what little they have done, as if it were 
whole-souled renunciation. 

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes 
to live ; it is asking 'Others to let one live as 
one wishes to live. And unselfishness is 
letting other people's lives alone, not inter- 
fering with them.'' Here is the philo- 
sophy of freedom embodied. He believed 
that all lives should grow, just as flowers 
^ow, and that each life should take on 
its own expression. With one other great 
soul he held, "Hands off ; if you can help, 
well and good; if you cannot help, be- 
ware of interfering !" That was the sum 

48 



REVELATIONS 



and substance of the selfishness of which 
he has been accused. Why should one 
live for others? Let one first learn how 
to live for himself, and if one learns how 
to live for himself, if he has learned how 
to realize his own ideals and to stand 
firmly on the individual basis of thought 
and experience — the whole environment 
in which he moves is made better, thous- 
ands of times by it. 

He held all life to be sacred. He re- 
garded it with the veneration one ap- 
proaches a great and solemn sacrament. 
He denied that life could be placed into 
the narrow enclosures of speculative 
opinions or even of accepted moral stan- 
dards. He realized, as do all philoso- 
phers, that morality is a shifting quantity 
and according to different times do differ- 
ent standards arise. He saw that the 
vices of the few are the price society pays 
for the virtues of the many. He saw, 
also, that there were elements in human 

49 



EEVELATIONS 



nature, if not for the actual admiration 
of vice, then at least for the make-up of 
that great body of experience which is 
the history of human society as personi- 
fied in the tragic characters of the opera 
and the drama. In other words, he saw 
the artistic, and the human and historic 
realities of vice. The only fault that the 
world finds with its own badness is, after 
all, not the badness of badness, but the 
weakness of badness, for vices committed 
on a great scale are approved of by so- 
ciety. He who stains his hands with the 
blood of one single life is a murderer ; he 
who slaughters millions, either by the 
sword, or by the more foul means of 
financial power, is the hero. 

Oscar Wilde knew that the- world is 
bad, very bad as it goes ; so he tore off the 
mask and, admitting that there were bad 
elements in human nature, made these 
very things the corner-stone of a higher 
order of life and a still greater standard 



50 



EEVELATIONS 



of art for society with its future. Ee- 
ligion to him, became the natural living 
of life ; and in this sense he went even so 
far as to place the self-expression of the 
poet Shelley on the same level of spiritu- 
ality as he spoke of Father Damien, who 
went out from home and comfort to the 
abiding-place of the leperous outcasts. 
It was the vulgarity in badness that Oscar 
Wilde denounced; and of vulgarity and 
of death he mentions that they are the 
only inexplicable facts. 

Gifted with that insight into the social 
structure, he mercilessly assailed every 
institution and every personality he 
found on the side of that ponderous hy- 
pocrisy which goes by the name of social 
progress. For this reason he made ene- 
mies, many enemies, and enemies who 
hated him with the hatred which pursued 
him until the end — the hatred that put 
him into the prison-house and hounded 
him even after his spirit had been broken, 

51 



REVELATIONS 



The world has no time for those who 
upset its sense of hypocritical righteous- 
ness and complacent ease. It hounds 
them out and gives them no peace. 

Oscar Wilde was the prophet of the 
World of Becoming ; and one never knows 
with regard to the future what new moods 
of social consciousness and conscience 
may arise. His belief was that life 
should be seen as the stream of fluctuat- 
ing experience and that no portion of the 
stream could be permanent or absolutely 
true, that does not flow with the swift- 
ness of the current towards the ocean of 
future progress. No form of culture was 
true, to him, except in so far as it bore 
the stamp of the constant renewal of its 
possibilities. To him life was long and 
art was fleeting, and the more real wei 
could make our visuali2;ation of the ideals 
in art, and the more concrete we could 
make our artistic images and artistic op- 
portunities, the more would we shorten 

52 



REVELATIONS 



the monotony of life, the more would we 
rid ourselves of the mortality of life and 
enter the ranks and the files of the Im- 
mortals. To him truth was never sta- 
tionary. It was eternal, and it was true, 
because it constantly assumes newer and 
more revealing relations. Truth is made 
up of the progress of luminous ideas, and 
the more luminous the ideas become, the 
more luminous do the personalities be- 
come who understand them. The spir- 
itual outlook he possessed was the facing 
of reality, the tearing off of all masks, of 
all appearances from society and from 
thought and the entering into the domain 
of real things even at the cost of a thor- 
•ough self-confession, on the part of so- 
ciety, of its own weaknesses. 

The clever writer was the deep philoso- 
pher. The brilliant epigrammatist had 
within him the serious philosopher, the 
enlightened sage. And the conscious man, 
Oscar Wilde, was the compounding, into 

53 



EEVELATIONS 



one single eloquent utterance, of tlie sub- 
conscious voices of numerous personal- 
ities that slept in the depths of the thought 
within him. He was not only the exquisite 
moulder of exquisite sentences, but the 
observer of all other observers. He was 
the philosopher-poet, the poet-philoso- 
pher. He was the destroyer of those 
beautiful illusions society entertains, 
which makes virtues of its vices and 
truths of the most glaring falsenesses. 
He showed the hollowness of the appar- 
ently sound basis of the culture of our 
times. He turned over the conventional 
notion of what is ethical and of what is 
proper ; and he was the "Arbiter Eleganti- 
arum" in the domain of modern sociology 
and of the culture that is-to-be. 

The shams of religion, the shams of 
politics, the shams of society and the 
shams of morality, — all these Oscar Wilde 
laid bare. He made a confession to so- 
ciety of its own faults, and he laughed 

54 



EEVELATIONS 



at all its sins. He excused them as a god 
might excuse them and he endeavoured to 
show the ways of repentance in the fol- 
lowing of a newer, more enlightened, more 
truly human outlook where the vision is 
fixed upon the realities in the World of 
Constant Becoming. 

But the sinner is wary of the confes- 
sional ; and for this reason did the world 
have little use for its father-confessor in 
Oscar Wilde. 



55 



Mttntiom 



INTENTIONS 

If one makes a thorough study of the 
life of Oscar .Wilde, he is inevitably 
brought face to face with the realistic 
features of the whole life of the man. 
He is brought face to face with the in- 
tentions of Oscar Wilde. Whatever may 
have been the final outcome of the career 
of Oscar Wilde in so far as externals go 
and in so far as the world approved or 
disapproved, there is no doubt that within 
the sphere of his own personal under* 
standing of the values of life, his inten- 
tions were real. That is, he was sincere. 
Early in life he had come across the 
knowledge of the message that lies behind 
all art ; early in life he had come to realize 
the urgent spirit of progress as the back- 
ground of the expression any age gives 
of itself in art. Therefore, from the ear- 
liest beginning of his literary life he set 

59 



INTENTIONS 



himself to that task of beeoming aware 
of the essential elements of art, — which, 
after all, are of the realities of life itself. 
So when he speaks of himself as render- 
ing the terms and the consciousness of 
philosophy into the domain of art, one 
finds that he is not splendidly insincere, 
not anxious to be known as the clever and 
unreal paradoxist, but eager to make art 
the medium for the experience of life, to 
make art the expression of life. Through 
this form he succeeded, where most others 
have failed, in putting realism into art, 
of heightening the realities of art, of mak- 
ing art more human, more real, more of 
a messenger of the concrete, more of a 
power in interpreting life as it is. 

This was fundamentally the intention of 
Oscar Wilde — to take art from its rather 
metaphysical ground into the sound- 
er realities, where its foundation would 
be life. Imagination was to be subordi- 
nated to the marvelous realism that 

60 



INTENTIONS 



already exists. For these reasons his very 
life was a revelation in art; it was the 
expression of a free-living, free- thinking 
S'onl whose personality was the outcome 
of a rich soul, even as the glorious rose- 
blosson is of the great richness of the soil. 
He saw dreams not outside, but within 
life. He saw the ideal with the real. Be- 
fore him the real and ideal were separate ; 
in the contents of his literary message 
they were revealed as one. Life itself is 
the standing-ground of the real and the 
ideal. Life itself is the treasure-house of 
all reality and of all beauty and, verily, 
even of all divinity. Scrutinizing the 
pages of his works one is constantly re- 
minded of the richness and glory of life. 
Even religion, for him, was in the natural 
living of life, in the spontaneity of soul in 
its response to the stimulus of the outside 
world. The visible universe was, in his 
mind, a temple, and each soul a priest 
in waiting upon the JJniversal Soul, 

61 



INTENTIONS 



the One Real. Therefore, art must not 
deny life; it must simply reveal it. 
And in the revelation, naturally, there 
is frequently to be found a setting-at- 
nought of our easy, time-made and small- 
opinioned standards of ethics and seem- 
ing propriety. Civilization is, in itself, 
a movement from simplicity to com- 
plexity, or, in other words a speeding 
of the human soul from virtue to vice. 
A moment arrives in the ensemble of the 
ideals of culture when the climax has been 
reached. And then the nations cry out, 
^^Alack the day! Have we come in our 
search for truth, in our far-striding on 
the paths of progress — to THIS !'' Such 
is the complaint of the age ! And that is 
why every poet is a messenger of the Re- 
turn to Simplicity, which is the Mother- 
hood of Virtue. That is why poets are the 
prophets of the times, and why their mes- 
sage is always spiritual. It is the seeing 
of the ideal in the real, — and this is, or it 

.62 



INTENTIONS 



should be, the message of art, the function 
of all artistic intention; — and it was 
this that fundamentally underlayed the 
purposes of the life of Oscar Wilde. 

Outside the ways of civilization is the 
great freedom of life. Civilization is a 
limitation w^hich the ignorance of society 
places upon the naturalness of life. Oscar 
Wilde having seen deeply into the appear- 
ance of society, saw that behind the dis- 
cipline-of-fear, which makes society, was 
all the longing of the spirit of man ; and 
progress is the bursting of limitations. 
And ignorance dislikes moving — ^that is 
why progress inevitably brings pain, and 
why the luminous personalities who in- 
augurate progress are always sacrificed 
to the ignorance of man, being crucified 
as was Jesus Christ of old. Oscar Wilde, 
after having read the meaning of the dif- 
ferent historic experiences, felt that in 
the society of the Greeks, in the height of 
their social prosperity, were realized the 

63 



INTENTIONS 



ideal visions of life that was there lived 
to its fullest, where it was flexible to the 
stimulus of the natural desires of man; 
and the desires of man, when natural, 
are always artistic. He sensed the spirit 
of his own epoch as born of the smallness 
of men who barter; he saw his period as 
that of trade and of the extension of em- 
pire, — not through the romance of sacri- 
fice and the heightened imagination of 
nations, but through the pain of the poor 
and the oppressed and the merciless 
power of moneyed associations, when it is 
all sordid and cruel without a morsel of 
romance. The life of Oscar Wilde, and 
his art as well, will testify to the romance 
of things. It is the note of a rich sim- 
plicity, the sound of an old ideal world 
in the loud noise and strife of the present 
age. It is the clarion-call to a newer 
order founded upon venerably-old spir- 
itual ideals. After all, life is an experi- 
ment, as said in a previous chapter, and 

64 



INTENTIONS 



every soul is making an effort at tlie in- 
terpretation wliich, in ratio to the cliar- 
acter of its desires, it deems the highest. 
In this light, even mistakes balance to 
the credit side. Even mistakes are the 
landmarks of progressive movement. 
Even mistakes are the signs and prophe- 
cies of higher things. And the relation of 
art to ethics is the taking-into-one-beauti- 
ful-whole of the mistakes and the virtues. 
Vice is never offensive under the gold 
covering of art. Theology, not art, has 
made vice. Vice dwells in vulgarity. Vul- 
garity is vice. Apart from vulgarity, all 
life is beautiful, is real, is good, is of the 
soul. This was the message of Oscar 
Wilde, and of this was the character of 
his intention as wrought into his message. 
When Oscar Wilde speaks of art it is 
no limited sense. It is an all-embracive 
definition that he gives. Art is the visual- 
ization of the perfect things in life ; it re- 
veals the perfection of life, and the reve- 

65 



INTENTIONS 



lation may be in literature or in philoso- 
phy, in music or in marble, on canvas or 
in stone. Its meaning may be read in the 
architecture of a cathedral or in a poem ; 
it may be glimpsed in song or in eloquence 
of any form. In this inclusive sense art 
is philosophy or the concrete reflection of 
man upon life; it is the vision of man as 
to the glories and the powers of life, 
whether it be the glories and the powers 
of pain or of pleasure, or of so-called evil 
or of so-called good. Art is life ; it is ever 
at oneness -with life. It is the perfect 
commingling of the soul of man with the 
soul of nature. And the poet is the high- 
priest of art. What mighty messages are 
throbbing in his heart! What messages 
and what revelatioirs ! In him nature is 
struggling for the incarnation of itself; 
in him nature seeks articulate expression 
of itself. It has made the brain of the 
artist for the purposes of revealing glory 
even as it has created the oceans and the 

66 



INTENTIONS 



rock-ribbed mountains. The artist is as 
much a part of nature as are the sky and 
the stars. Oscar Wilde perceived this as 
one perceives any physical object and, 
consequently, he made this perception of 
the early years of manhood the conscious 
intention of all his work. The intentions 
of every poetic soul are the fashlights 
nature throws out upon its own forms and 
realities. Through the intentions of the 
poet the vision of the world grows larger. 
This is the spiritual feature of the lives 
and of the intentions of the poet-artists 
and of the artist-poets. Revelation! 
Revelation ! Revelation ! Indeed, that is 
the burden of all poets' songs. 

The drift of the artistic tendencies has 
always been into the direction of physical 
idealism ; and it will be seen that physical 
idealism is a mode of spiritual perception. 
Through the glories of form the soul steps 
into the region of the formlessness of its 
own life, where the substance of life is 

67 



INTENTIONS 



seen as freedom, and the form of life an 
ideal form whose substance is beauty. 
Behind everything Oscar Wilde intended 
to see the soul. He insisted that behind 
all expression must be the reality of the 
flood of feeling, the truth of the soul, the 
realization of the power of the soul. For 
all art is the product of feeling; some- 
times, indeed, of riotous, violent feeling; 
sometimes, indeed, of the culminating 
glory of feeling, — which is divinity. Art 
is the complement of life ; it fulfills ; it is 
the other half; without it life would be 
purely physical. With it life is divine; 
with it life is reality ; with it one has the 
vision of the soul encased in the beauty 
of form. The artist points to the soul 
that is set as a precious, priceless jewel 
within the setting of form. The soul, the 
poet sees, in the subtle reality, forever 
escaping definition, forever passing the 
scrutiny of knowledge. That is why Oscar 
Wilde repeatedly stated that neither life 

68 



INTENTIONS 



nor art can be set down by hard and fast 
rules. These are the free because they 
are of the soul. And the soul is a reality 
that cannot be bound, nor encompassed, 
that cannot be limited nor circumscribed 
in any way. The intentions of Oscar 
Wilde were of the soul of him ; they em- 
bodied the determination to set things 
aright once more with the soul which per- 
ceives them ; they embodied the principles 
of true vision that are, of course, dia- 
metrically opposed to life as he found it, 
and as all artists must find it. For life, 
as it is lived publicly, is in cheap ways 
and in sordid intentions. With this in 
mind Oscar Wilde, announcing a social 
observation said, "There is this to be said 
in favour of the despot, that he, being an 
individual, may have culture, while the 
mob, being a monster, has none." And 
the mob is always made up of those in 
position and in power who are the owners 
of barbaric souls and to whom the spirit 

69 



INTENTIONS 



of ideals is a foreign goddess. With such 
as these the materialism of the age is a 
constant companion; and materialism is 
always the death-blow to art. All artists 
are the apostles of the soul ; they are the 
preachers of the spiritual life, for they 
have seen within the encasements of flesh 
the divine light that shines wherever there 
is beauty or glory, or majesty or power, 
wherever there is truth or goodness, or 
grandeur or greatness, — and Oscar Wilde, 
being the poet-artist was, verily, such a 
priest and preacher and apostle. 



70 



a0pttatton$ 



ASPIRATIONS 

The findings of the poets are always 
spiritual findings. Their vision is ex- 
tended, above that of the ordinary, into 
the perspective of nobler realities. Be- 
cause of this they are always possessed 
of glorious aspirations. Perhaps sB^- 
times unconsciously; but it is always so. 
The medium through which the poet ma- 
terializes his aspiration is art. In this he 
roams, the creature of the free impulse ; — 
and the free impulse is always the im- 
pulse of spirituality. For this reason, 
unquestionably, Oscar Wilde had number- 
less aspirations, whose ideal was the dis- 
covery of the real and the true. He in- 
tended that the personal vision he had of 
the true and the real should be applic- 
able to the society in which he found him- 
self ; in the changes of society he saw the 
spiritual forecast of humanity No matter 

73 



ASPIRATIONS 



what the character of such changes might 
be, they were changes, and for this reason, 
they were needful and good. Monotony 
in society necessarily implied to him, that 
society was at a standstill so far as the 
opportunities for progress were con- 
cerned. He believed in revolutions, there- 
fore, and also in rebellions. He was the 
messenger of the Rightful Stirring Up so 
that new eras be born out of the chaos of 
old social forms. In his remorseless crit- 
icism of society he was the herald of an 
approaching social dawn, when better 
things were to be, and a more real and na- 
tural order of living was to transplant the 
hypocrisies of the day. He had no time for 
the mimicries of virtue and honour that 
prevailed everywhere ; he was no respect- 
er of institutions that were at bottom 
corrupt. And he was the champion of the 
depressed and of the downtrodden, all be- 
cause he had aspirations. And these as- 
pirations had nothing whatsoever to do 

74 



ASPIRATIONS 



with himself as a personality; they had 
everything to do with the society in which 
he lived and in which he believed, — how- 
ever cynical it might seem to say this. He 
was a man of tempestuous aspirations. 
In him one found the prophecies of the 
future fulfillment of society's hopes. He 
was the prophet of nobler institutions and 
of an epoch of heightened sincerity. He 
upheld, fundamentally, all those ingredi- 
ents of culture, however the world might 
laugh at them, which embodied the pos- 
sibilities of the growing-forth and the 
becoming-big of the spirit of romance. 
His dramas are the denunciation of so- 
ciety, at first glance ; on a studious survey 
of their real characters they are found, 
however, to be the hopes for a better or- 
der. Genius and not birth was to deter- 
mine aristocracy. The circle that was the 
exclusive, by reason of its very inclusive- 
ness, was to be the circle of the intellect- 
ually and intuitively great. The burden 

75 



ASPIEATIONS 



of his message was, "Throw ofO all ap- 
pearance! Let us stand in sincerity of 
attitude before the oncoming of the future 
generations !" 

Oscar Wilde's aspirations were for the 
poor. How his heart throbbed for the 
poor of all ages ! The heart-rending fact, 
he said, of the French revolution was not 
the beheading of the queen of France, 
but the voluntary sacrifice of the peas- 
ants of the Vendee who, though starving, 
went out to fight for the hideous cause of 
feudalism. On all occasions his heart 
suffered and struggled for the depressed 
classes. In this he proved himself to be 
capable and to be possessed of monu- 
mental sincerity. He showed himself the 
owner of multitudinous aspirations, and 
to be a man of courage and a man of 
strength. Coming from his lips one hears 
that strong and exquisite saying of his, 
"Those who reject the battle are more 
deeply wounded than they who take part 

76 



ASPIRATIONS 



in it." And therefore lie threw himself 
boldly into the vortex of society; and he 
accused and he accursed ; and he took the 
whips of criticism and lashed heavily all 
those that were guilty of hypocrisy and 
tyranny. He spared none. And he him- 
self was not spared. For he stood up be- 
fore audiences that did not understand 
him; and he was mocked and persecuted 
for his vision. And still the welling-up 
of his aspiration did not cease. He sang 
all the more strongly. And he sang so 
loud that even death has not engulfed his 
song; but then he had said of all song 
that it should be stronger than death. 

Here and there one senses the spirit- 
uality of his aspirations. How wonder- 
ful and how spiritual is that remark of 
his, "Art is the one thing death cannot 
harm." This was the Faith of Oscar 
Wilde that only that was real, that only 
that was spiritual which went beyond the 
conquests of death. And art he recog- 

77 



ASPIRATIONS 



nized and spoke of on all occasions as im- 
mortal. Because art is an inner, spiritual 
existence ; it lias nothing whatsoever to do 
with the concrete. The concrete may be 
its medium, but never its own subject. 
What is there in words or in stones save 
that which the soul reads into them? 
Oscar Wilde, together wdth all other 
poets, reached beyond the borders of 
purely physical things, and made serious 
effort to perceive art in its own sphere, — 
and that sphere is the sphere of eternity 
and immutability where nothing perishes, 
and where every single image is perfect. 
The aspirations of Oscar Wilde were all- 
inclusive of the modern requirements. 
They embraced every sphere of sociology 
and socialism, but socialism of that type 
w^hich meant the introduction of all op- 
portunities for artistic expression. In 
certain portions of the literature of Oscar 
Wilde one climbs with him the stairs of 
gold that lead above the marts of men to 

78 



ASPIRATIONS 



God. One ascends with him to regions 
of pure feeling where the soul meets with 
its own self and stands on the border- 
lands of infinite things. 

Wherever one finds Oscar Wilde it is 
always on the safe side of progress. His 
position concerning womanhood bears 
this out in strong ways. He hoped for a 
brighter future for womanhood, when it 
should take part in the deliberations of 
the nations and should take its seat in the 
jurisdiction of the world. His aspiration 
included for womanhood complete eman- 
cipation in all forms. He was never mean. 
Whatever he saw to be right, he an- 
nounced that. He could not be insincere 
with truth. He saw that conditions of so- 
ciety, particularly in the realm of politics, 
tended to hamper the natural and per- 
sonal development of women; and that 
unless they asserted themselves, all hope 
would be lost. He regarded them not only 
as women, but as equals and counterparts 

79 



ASPIKATIONS 



of men in the effort to enunciate the hu- 
man realities. In fact, in the very highest 
sense, he was the pleader of no law. In 
that he was a spiritual communist and so- 
cially an anarchist. He saw that laws 
often held back the very progress they 
were intended to accelerate ; and he knew, 
also, that laws were as capable of grow- 
ing infirm and old, even as the physical 
form. Therefore he pleaded for no law, 
except that of Common Consent in those 
matters which demanded a combination 
of effort for the revelation of higher 
things and nobler ideals. 

Outside the mere living of life there are 
glories of which the poet alone is aware ; 
and these glories are resident in another 
and more luminous sphere, the sphere of 
ideals in themselves. And the moment of 
perception is as well the moment of 
ecstasy. Thus the poet is the saint. He 
is the seer of things as they are. Closely 
does he touch the confines of ideal things. 

80 



ASPIRATIONS 



He almost visualizes them. He almost 
renders them concrete. And with that 
splendid eloquence of his, Oscar Wilde 
made the world possessed of many things 
of which heretofore it had not dreamed. 
Oscar Wilde dreamed, and the world is 
richer for his dreaming. In that delight- 
fully ^searching manner of his thought 
one sees how he was naturally the mystic 
in his treatment of the world common- 
sense, in its plea for sole reality. He 
looked upon the world of commonsense as 
the world of tragedy and tears, of hollow 
mockery and terrible laughter. Only in 
the world of art was he free; only there 
did he feel himself safe from the reproach 
of them that dwell in small ways and 
whose habitation is the very foulness they 
condemn. He dwelt there where truth is 
peace and where peace is illumination 
and where illumination is proximity to 
God. He was familiar with sights and 
sounds of which the man of the commoa- 

81 



ASPIPvATIONS 



sense world has neither consciousness nor 
capactity of faculty. The soul of Oscar 
iWilde is the reality of him ; and all other 
personal elements were as the straws that 
are swept before the wind. For it is the 
soul in every man that is reality ; and all 
other and personal elements are verily as 
straws carried on before the wind. And 
it is the reality in a man which is desir- 
able to see and observe. It is the aspira- 
tion towards larger spheres of reality 
which is worthy of witnessing. And this 
should be what is spoken of with refer- 
ence to every man — that wherein his soul 
is large and divine, be it in the arts or in 
the sciences or in religious life. The re- 
ality in man is free from all personal 
dross; it is the shining light of truth 
which God sees, and in that reality God 
verily makes Himself incarnate. The re- 
ality in each and everyone is the reality 
of the divine, and that is of the soul. Thus 
it is the soul which is; thus it is thetsoul 

S2 



ASPIRATIONS 



which aspires. It was the soul which in 
Oscar Wilde took on the championship of 
truth wherever he saw truth and confined 
itself to no bounds except the bounds of 
the determination to see God. And in 
this respect what visions were his as the 
result of his aspirations! They were 
numerous and enormous. 

In the urgent impulse of the soul at 
self-discovery and self-expression, we find 
the facts and characters of aspiration. In 
the effort of the personality of man to rise 
to the soul's level, — in that, verily is as- 
piration. In so far as a man rises above 
the average conceptions of his day and 
perceives newer ideas and newer ideals, 
only in so far does he enter the \vorld of 
aspiration. Aspiration was as the central 
flame in the whole spiritual make-up of 
the illumination of Oscar Wilde. He pos- 
sessed, also, the innate strength without 
which there can be no aspiration ; that is, 
subconsciously he was aware that within 

83 



ASPIEATIONS 



himself were the powers and potential- 
ities of making aspiration, — realization. 
And the result of aspiration, again, de- 
pend solely on the power of the aspirant 
to touch higher zones of consciousness 
and vision. The whole body of the liter- 
ature of Oscar Wilde is that of aspira- 
tion ; — and, also, of inspiration that comes 
of aspiration. 

And the aspiration of Oscar Wilde has 
become realization not only to himself. 
It bids fair to become realizations unto 
millions. For now is the world wide 
awake and on the alert for the revelation 
of newer ideals. And in so far as Oscar 
Wilde was the messenger of new things, 
in so far has he achieved immortality in 
the memory of men. And because he was 
the revealer of greater ideas than have 
been with the world before, verily for that 
reason is he to grow higher and higher 
in the estimation of men and to be en- 
dowed with the powers to think and live 

84 



ASPIKATIONS 



in tlie hearts and thouglits of others who 
€ome to understand him, and in this he 
had already become Immortal ! And for 
this he lived ! 



85 



laeaU^attans 



EEALIZATIONS 

Undoubtedly the realizations of the 
soul of Oscar Wilde were many and 
varied. He carried with him, as his con- 
stant companions, those finer realities in 
the way of feeling that are peculiarly 
characteristic of one who has been made 
aware of the potentialities of the spir- 
itual impulse. He was gloriously con- 
scious of the reality of the soul as domi- 
nant in every form of experience. The 
one thing that is, was to his mind, the 
soul. So one finds him- preaching the 
doctrines of the most ancient of the spir- 
itual teachers, "Man, know thyself!'' In 
fact he says, "The realization of oneself 
is the prime aim of life, and to realize 
oneself through pleasure is finer than to 
do so through pain." ^he expression of 
one's nature, the moulding into experi- 
ence, of the potentialities within, the ma- 

89 



EEALIZATIONS 



terialization of the possibilities for per- 
fection into self-conscious reality, — these 
things to him were of the beginning and 
the fulfillment of life. And the natural 
medium for expression, he imagined, was 
through pleasure; and it is not wonder- 
ful that he imagined thus. For he had 
been too long the disciple of the Prophet 
of Pain not to know all the inner work- 
ings of the elements of pain in the devel- 
opments of one's nature. So he turned 
to pleasure in the end ; not to riotous 
pleasure, be it remembered, but to artis- 
tic pleasure, wherein the soul basks free 
of the stigma of "good" or "evil.'' Dwell- 
ing within itself is the Live Fire of the 
soul which is of the Flame of the Most 
High. Let this fire burn as it will. In 
the end it must always and inevitably re- 
move the dross from the gold in experi- 
ence. 

Oscar Wilde's personality loved to bask 
in the sunshine and in the play of life. To 

90 



REALIZATIONS 



Mm life was Greek. It was buoyant ; it 
was full of divinity. It was spiritual; it 
was of the gods. And immortality was 
in art! Immortality was already, even 
here on earth, in the adequate fulfillment 
of the potentialities of personality. To 
live was to rank already with the Im- 
mortals, to be recognized as of the Olym- 
pian Gods. And his fine saying was, 
"Most people exist, that is all." Inher- 
ently he had a passion for life. To him 
it was spiritual; to him it was replete 
with spiritual portents. It was big with 
spiritual meaning. It was possessed of 
spiritual powers. And the creative 
faculty of the soul acting in response to 
the highest stimulus of the soul's own 
powers was in itself, utmost si)iritual. 
"The senses, no less than the soul, have 
their spiritual mysteries to reveal," he 
once put it in this relation. 

The body was of the soul. It was the 
temple and the mind and the soul were 

91 



EEALIZATIONS 



Priest and High-Priest respectively. To 
him each had its function and its sphere 
of expression. To him, body, mind, soul 
were the spiritual trinity of the micro- 
cosmos; and Art was to dominate all. 
And in Art, using that term in its highest 
significance, were to be discovered the es- 
sentials for the making of immortality 
out of the elements of mortal life. The 
god was the man; the man was the god 
in-the-making. And the whole character 
of the message of life he read, as written 
in the sum and substance of the capaci- 
ties for expression. He revered all things ; 
he despised no single messenger in the 
revelation of life. But all artists are of 
this temperament. All artists have that 
within which says, "All this, even all this 
is good,'^ and they find fault with no 
thing; and they find no fault with their 
own lives and they hold that everyman 
must live his own life. But artists and 
poets are in the minority. But great are 

92 



KEALIZATIONS 



their ideas; nor is the sun as great as 
they. Higher than all mortal traffic is 
the perception of the assemblage of ideas 
that draw out the Man in man. In this 
the poet is the seer of potentialities and 
powers. He is the angel whose sight has 
been perfected. He is the man who has 
seen Manhood that is of the type and 
character of the Super-Man. O for the 
revelation of the soul within the form ! O 
for the divinity in the expression of the 
senses! O for the seeing of God in the 
beauty of form ! Need* one make myster- 
ies of theology, when life itself is the 
Greatest Mystery ! This is the version of 
poetry in relation to life; this also, the 
message of art in relation to life — In Life 
Behold Religion! 

Religion is in the culture of the eye 
to the perception of spirituality in the 
domain of physical form ; it is the training 
of the faculty* for hearing to the attuning 
of spiritual sound or silence, as the case 

93 



KEALIZATIONS 



may be, in this din and strife of life. It 
is the education of the powers of motion 
in the direction of freedom of personal 
bearing and in freedom of thought. Even 
so is it the education of the whole self 
into the direction of Art. And art is 
religion; and religion is art. And sym- 
bolism consists in the transfiguration of 
ideas into concrete realities that walk and 
speak and live and act with the senses. 
For now is religion perceived as being of 
and with art. And art is the messenger of 
spiritual facts amid their physical encase- 
ments ! Who shall deny this ! And herein 
is religion safe and secure against all the 
pulverizing of science. Here is religion 
inviolable, for herein it has come down 
from the heights of mystery, where it is 
dull and undefined, into the sunshine of 
living surroundings where it speaks unto 
all men the same concrete message, the 
same tokens of reality, "Man! Behold 
all the possibilities of Self within the 

94 



EEALIZATIONS 



powers of the Self at Self-analysis !'' For 
what, after all, is art but the self-revela- 
tion of man into the substances and ma- 
terials of art? Is there any distinction, 
therefore, between art and philosophy; 
and is not the artist the philosopher as 
well? 

How wonderful was his delicate treat- 
ment of the religions as he found them! 
He saw in them great artistic opportuni- 
ties ; and even in their superstitions did he 
observe foreshadowings in the way of ro- 
mance and beauty. They were "the colour 
elements of thought and imagination.^' 
Keligion offered all the necessary condi- 
tions for Indefinite spiritual expansion, — 
even unto that, where a man might em- 
brace and become larger, even than the 
sun and the moon, and all the hosts of 
heaven. And for these reasons, was every 
religion, to him, a form of actual redemp- 
tion. But for this reason, also and inevi- 
tably, was the founder of every religion 

95 



EEALIZATIONS 



crucified. Religion is romance; it is ro- 
mance between the soul and its own king- 
dom. It is the self-discovery of the soul ; 
it is the self-witnessing of the soul's own 
greatness. Because of this is religion 
comprehensive in the great treatment of 
life as art. There is no end to opportun- 
ity in the spiritual realization; and all 
forms of life, all modes of expression and 
experience were, to him most certainly, 
in and of the soul. The degree differs in 
the ratio of intensity, but it is all of that 
one and same spiritual longing. It is all 
one and of the same spiritual impetus and 
striving. Conquest of all obstacles to ex- 
pression was, to Oscar Wilde, the tri- 
umphing of soul. The unravelling of all 
mysteries, so that the soul might stand 
forth, claiming itself, — this for him was 
elemental in the conception of religion. 
He knew, and was glad in the knowing, 
that spirituality is not "religiosity'' but 
something quite separate and apart. It 

96 



KEALIZATIONS 



was super-provincial and all-inclusive. It 
was not theologically territorial. It was 
not dogamatism, as religion is. And spir- 
ituality to him meant the consciousness of 
the suppleness of life to all touches of 
pure desire, all touches of natural aspira- 
tion; and in this all distinction between 
"good'' and "bad" were lost. Then, too, 
it necessitated luminosity on all forms of 
understanding. It implied readiness and 
sprightliness of the intuitive perceptions. 
It meant the singling-out of spiritual ele- 
ments wherever there were any to be had. 
It included the consciousness of divinity 
within one's own nature ; and if that were 
blasphemy, then let the world make the 
most of it, and even God, if He is that 
personal! For is it not that every atom 
is spiritual per se; and is it not that the 
worm is the God in-the-becoming? Who 
shall set the confines to the expanses of 
the divine nature, or who shall demarcate 
that which is divinity and that which is 

97 



EEALIZATIONS 



not. The spirituality of Oscar Wilde was 
Pantlieism, plus Super-Pantheism. 

To be one's self a god ; to walk among 
the common environment of life conscious 
of a superiority within ; to take size and 
measure of one's own stature and be con- 
scious of it as being both larger and more 
spiritual than the limitations that civili- 
zation has set upon life, — this, in another 
form, was also the spirituality of Oscar 
Wilde. IN'eed we wonder, then, at his tem- 
pestuous efforts at self-expression ! Need 
we wonder at the revelations he gave of 
himself ! His spirituality was flower-like. 
It loved the Son of God and understood 
Him and could set Him amidst the jewels 
of poetry as much as he could speak of a 
flaming sunset or an experience of the 
uttermost in feeling. The spiritual im- 
ages of Oscar Wilde's poetry were those 
that constitute the proper elements of the 
religious consciousness itself. For are 
not the rivers and the flowers and the 

98 



KEALIZATIONS 



mountains- and the seas parts and ele- 
ments of the Lord God Most High in His 
Own Nature? At least to the poet it is 
so ; and it was so, at least, to Oscar Wilde. 
He found immortality and God in Na- 
ture ; he found Nature in and as God. He 
saw divinity in the budding of the rose 
and divinity in the setting of suns. He 
saw the universe as created, essentially, in 
the image and in the likeness of God ; and 
as to God himself, he found God dwelling 
within the Abyss of the Soul. Can any- 
one read his poetic stanzas written in 
Italy and bearing upon the spiritual real- 
ities Oif Roman Catholicism without feel- 
ing closer to Christ as a Saviour indeed, 
•because Christ, as Oscar Wilde himself 
said, was undoubtedly a poet among poets, 
for all his utterances are poetic utter- 
ances ; and it was Oscar Wilde who loved 
to think that, indeed, Christ spoke in 
Greek, even as the Gospels were written 
in that language. And languorous fan- 

99 



REALIZATIONS 



cies float upon the mind in the dreaming 
of the poetic dreams of Oscar Wilde of 
powers and potencies that he was made 
aware of in the frequent and marvellous 
unfoldings that were his, as it were, in 
the very inner vision of spiritual worlds. 
And his poems may be regarded, here and 
there, as prophecies and prayers, and he, 
himself, verily as priest and prophet. And 
throughout one catches a glimpse of the 
refinement of that which was his soul and 
of the pain it knew, and of the longing it 
knew, as well, to transcend the bonds of 
physical limitations and soar aloft into 
the pure empyrean of artistic reality, — - 
and to him artistic and spiritual reality 
were one. They were not one or two. 
They were aspects of the Same; and, that 
Same, — the Soul of Man, — ^verily, verily, 
his own Soul ! 



100 



3Uumination$ 



ILLUMINATIONS 

Culminating as the climaxes in his lit- 
erature and art and as the crown-piece of 
the jeweled frame-work of his life were 
the illuminations of Oscar Wilde. 
Throughout one recognizes in him the 
mind with insight. His art and his 
poetry were the expression of his in- 
sight, and the elements through which it 
found beautiful form in the expression 
were numerous and consummate illum- 
inations. These pressing hard upon the 
personal consciousness of him gave utter- 
ance to poetic and philosophic song. 
Beauty and truth, — these are the dual 
expression of that inner order of stimulus 
and response of soul whose outcome are 
illuminations. The soul searching with- 
in itself for reality discovers it, spirit- 
ually, in the flow of concentration; then 
follow, in the train of concentration, 

103 



ILLUMINATIONS 



science and philosophy and art and new 
modes of life and renewed and more ex- 
alted states of consciousness. This is 
the ecstasy of the inner life; this is the 
world of the intuitive self, the world of 
the self within, greater than the cosmos 
without. And in the grand distinctions 
that exist between the inner world of one 
and the inner world of another are there 
the distinctions, likewise, between per- 
sons who are ordinarily human and per- 
sons who are both human and spiritual. 
The incarnation of personality becomes 
spiritual in the transmutations of con- 
sciousness wherein the latter is shifted 
from normal to super-normal relations 
and wherein revelations take higher 
and higher flight and higher and more 
wondrous form. Within the depths of 
personality are the tides of divine spir- 
ituality, but the ebb and the flow of them, 
so far as time and illumination are con- 
cerned, depend on the efforts of person- 

104 



ILLUMINATIONS 



ality to transcend itself ; and this is done 
in the seeking by the soul for the forms 
of reality and of beauty and of truth. 
And everyone, according to his own 
fashion, approaches divinity; but the 
method of the poet is unique ; and the il- 
luminations which he receives are more 
manifold and far more intense. The 
whole surge of life is divine, but the poet 
meets that divine reality through both 
forms of perception, — those of the intel- 
lect and of the heart. The search of the 
scientist leads him along the arid desert 
of facts, but the search of the poet is 
along broad rivers of spirituality flanked 
with wondrous gardens where grow the 
marvellous and beautiful realities of soul 
in the gardens of love and life and where 
joy reigns and where the perception of 
truth itself is joy. 

The whole imagination of Oscar Wilde 
was coloured with those richer elements 
of life which are immediate to the treas- 

105 



ILLUMINATIONS 



ure-places of reality in its higher sense. 
His soaring in soul, through the medium 
of his poetic thought and fancy, led him 
from out the tumult of life into the si- 
lent retreats where the soul communes 
with its own richness and its own ecstasy. 
To the poet life is a grand spectacle and 
he is the privileged witness ; and he sings 
so perfectly because he is not of it. Or 
if of it at all, then he sings because the 
panorama of life is beautiful as a whole, 
both in its sorrows and in its joys, in its 
mistakes and its flaws, as well as in its 
virtues and its heroic greatnesses. The 
vision of the elect is the poetic vision, 
and all saints are poets and all saints are 
prophets. In them personality is dead 
and the heart-throbbing of a world is 
made personal. Their personalities have 
become the Individuality of the race, the 
sacred, aspiring Individuality of man as 
Humanity. Their illuminations borde^* 
upon every definition of life. That is 

106 



ILLUMINATIONS 



why one finds in Oscar Wilde the pro- 
phet of the redemption of society as well 
as the prophet of the redemption of art. 
He yearns for higher ideals in education 
as well as in art. One hears as though 
it were but yesterday that eloquent and 
rich saying of his which reads, "The best 
way to make people good is to make them 
happy.'' In this there is the penetrating 
touch to all educational insight. If the 
purpose of education be the training of 
the moral faculties, then, indeed, happi- 
ness, of itself, creates the conditions for 
goodness. And, in truth, goodness and 
blessedness are one. 

Indeed, one w^ould always think of 
classifying the moral observations of 
Oscar Wilde as spiritual illuminations, 
because they mark him out to have been 
the witness of the wonderful opportun- 
ities that follow in the wake of that in- 
definably spiritual morality, dependent 
on personal insight, which, of necessity, 

107 



ILLUMINATIONS 



insures a grand futurity in all personal 
and spiritual progress. And his illum- 
inations in this sense are always vibrant 
and sonant with a remarkable under- 
standing of the relation between freedom 
and ethics. For example he says, "There 
are moments when one has to choose be- 
tween living one's own life, fully, en- 
tirely, completely — or dragging out some 
false, shallow, degrading existence that 
the world in its hypocrisy demands !'' 
Can the soul speak more clearly of the 
demands which it realizes must be made 
of ethics in the way of spiritual liberty. 
Hard and fast rules cannot be put down 
for that expansion of thought and life 
which is the growth of the soul. And, 
as a matter of fact, all the leaps and 
bounds that have been made at any time 
in the world's history, so far as both 
morals and intelligence are regarded, 
have always been the sequence of the vic- 
torious demand made by the soul in the 

108 



ILLUMINATIONS 



direction of living its own life and of 
following its own ideals. Because of this 
insight he insisted that there are no codes 
and standards for the artist. Verily his 
own temperament is the standard and 
test. By that he goes forward; by that 
he launches forth and creates. Had the 
great in soul who have made the world 
stopped at its stupid gaping and, in fear, 
failed to proceed onward and boldly in 
the paths of vision and insight, to what 
a sad pass of retrogression and benight- 
edness should society have come! Cour- 
ageous as lions are the makers of the 
world and they stalk through the jungle 
of confused social ideals and purposes 
with that manner — the world must give 
way. And this was of the spiritual il- 
luminations of Oscar Wilde that one must 
proceed boldly and valiantly, not heeding 
the loud noise of criticism and always 
mindful of the vision possessed. 
Take him from his environment, or 
109 



ILLUMINATIONS 



rather from the environment of his age, 
allow him to stand in the pure light of 
the flame of his own life and one sees in 
Oscar Wilde the thoughts and the ideals 
of the spiritual genius. He believed defi- 
nitely in God as the Highest Good; he 
certainly believed more in God than he 
did in man; and he had more reason to. 
But then he also believed in man, but 
in man as the Super-Man of the Future. 
He believed in a mankind that was to be 
whose vision should never be blunted, 
which should be able to see truths and 
ideals through the largest possible human 
perspective. Then all narrowness will 
have died out, all limitations that now 
bind society will have been broken. Then 
all superstitions which tend towards the 
destruction of romantic culture and of 
the romantic spirit shall have utterly 
perished, and mankind stand on the very 
pinnacle of consummate intelligence view- 
ing the universe through the benevolence 



110 



ILLUMINATIONS 



which comes of deep wisdom, forgiving 
all weakness and recognizing, everywhere 
and at all times, the potentialities and the 
goodness of man. Then should the vision 
be concentrated on positive realities ; then 
should the vision be turned from the ob- 
servation of limitations to the glorious 
consciousness of all human opportunities, 
even though the marvellous working-out 
of these opportunities be fraught with 
fault and weakness. O for the vision that 
sees men and things as they are, in the 
ideal! O for the vision that soars be- 
yond the deformities of physical life, that 
takes in a larger scope of the ideal world ! 
O for the vision that sees greatness and 
forgives, — because of the perception of 
greatness ! Great is the man with illumi- 
nations, and few indeed are those who are 
like unto him. He is on the high-road to 
the realization of divine things. He is on 
the approach to super-mundane glories 
and super-mundane realities. And there 

111 



ILLUMINATIONS 



is no telling when or how he will think 
out and spread the message of the re- 
deeming vision. Oh ! the poet is both the 
priest and the preacher of illuminations. 
And illuminations are the greatest things 
in this world ; for it is by the splendour 
and by the light of illuminations that the 
world is led out of the darkness and the 
confusion of its relative perceptions into 
the vision of nobler and more inclusive 
realities. Therefore let the poet be un- 
derstood. It is not necessary that he be 
praised. For praise is often given be- 
cause those who praise are benighted by 
external show. And praise is cheap. But 
rare, above all things, is understanding; 
and it is understanding that the poet 
craves. He cares not for sympathy, ex- 
cept as sympathy is the Greek thing, 
which is a "feeling with" Sympathy, 
and taken in that definition is, indeed, the 
highest understanding. Understanding to 
the poet! But for understanding there 

112 



ILLUMINATIONS 



is required a passivity to the message of 
tlie poet ; there is needed a suppression of 
the egoistical instinct. One must live in 
and breathe the atmosphere of that real- 
istic ideal vi^orld from whence the poet 
breathes his aspiration. One must have 
learned to ascend through the com- 
monplaceness of life to the great and 
to the prodigious realms of inspiration 
where all phenomena are appreciated in 
the highest aesthetic relations, — and the 
highest aesthetic relations are of divinity. 
The poet leads those to whom his message 
reveals itself through the heaven-worlds 
of beauty to the radiant and higher 
spheres of divinity where the soul wit- 
nesses within itself the "Maker of Beau- 
ty" for beauty is not without, but within. 
And the more one penetrates inward, far, 
far inward, verily, behind the net-work of 
personality, into the inmost sanctuary of 
the soul, the more does he become aware 
of the source of the aspiration and in- 

113 



ILLUMINATIONS 



spiration of poets. The more does he en- 
ter with the poet the ecstatic conscious- 
ness where beauty is recognized as all- 
pervading and truth as embodied in 
beauty. The strength of the poet is in the 
ratio of his capacity to apprehend illumi- 
nations and to impart them, as well. 
Through the medium of language the 
poet steals his way into the inner pre- 
cincts of the divine nature, rendering in- 
carnate in the graphic beauty of poetry 
and art the very presence of ideal things. 
The world of illuminations comes closer, 
so it seems, because of the power of the 
poet-artist to render vision intense. And 
Oscar Wilde — of him it may be truly said 
that he put the illuminations of his vision 
into the jewel-like beauty of the phrase- 
ology of his poetry and prose. He placed 
the whole setting of life into a phrase, 
and he summed up the whole meaning of 
life into a song, but the phrase and the 
song, alike, were divine. And for this 

114 



ILLUMINATIONS 



should lie be remembered among the na- 
tions and for this and for bis illumina- 
tions should he be forgiven any faults 
that he may have had as man ; but, other- 
wise and apart, should the world seek 
pardon of him inasmuch as the world in 
its smallness in assaulting him vehem- 
ently attacked the soul of which he was 
possessed. And it not only decried the 
man, but his illuminations; it not only 
took dire vengance upon him for his 
faults, but mercilessly assailed the poet 
in him. But he, knowing that the world 
is by its nature bigoted, sought peace 
with God in his retiring days, uncon- 
cerned as to the happenings of the world. 
A grand indifference came over him ; and 
he became concerned only with the under- 
standing of his own soul; and he sought 
communion, likewise, with his own spirit 
as the great are wont to do. And it was 
the irony of fate, proving the strangeness 
of public vision, that he who in the height 

115 



ILLUMINATIONS 



of his prosperity, while residing in Paris, 
should have been appropriately styled, 
"The King of Life/^ should spend his 
last days in a condition bordering nigh 
on that of which Christ speaking said, 
that the foxes had their holes and the 
birds their nests, but the Son of Man 
had nowhere to lay his head. And it was 
in those dark hours of his fortune when, 
verily, it seemed that he had nowhere to 
lay his head and no place in which to 
find retirement from the "terrible laugh- 
ter'' of the world that Oscar Wilde had 
those illuminations of the highest spir- 
itual order that brought him close — very 
close to Grod, freeing him eventually from 
the pain of the body and the contempt of 
the world and bringing him through the 
valley of death into the glorious realm of 
the ideal of which he, as the poet, in his 
lifetime had such radiant visions and such 
resplendent illuminations. And the veils 
of the divine peace closed from his view 

IIG 



ILLUMINATIONS 



all the miseries and all the selfishness 
and all the woes of life, taking him into 
its own ineffable nature where he became 
aware of it and its blessedness. For the 
strength and the effulgence of illumina- 
tion enter, in their fullness and in their 
fulfillment, the veiled silence and the in- 
communicable bliss of peace. 



IIT 



CottcIu$ion0 



CONCLUSIONS 

And to what conclusions shall one 
eventually come when the book of the 
greatjiess of Oscar Wilde has been 
perused to the closing lines? What are 
the final realities? What are the last 
words to be said of him? That he was 
great; of that there is no doubt. Of the 
fact that he had a message and a mission, 
there is no doubt. That he remodelled 
the opinions of the world as to the func- 
tions and ideals of art is true. That he 
gave a new tone to social aspirations, 
rendering the aspirations of the multi- 
tudes into spiritual forms, is true. More 
true, however, in so far as he himself is 
to be regarded, was the magnitude of his 
personal consciousness, was the grandeur 
of his personal insight, was the soaring 
into everlasting realms of all the forms 
of his thought, was the supreme mood of 

121 



CONCLUSIONS 



his perceptions of all beauty and of all 
true culture. He praised the worthiness 
even of things which seem unworthy; he 
saw the goodness and the greatness of 
that which the commonplaceness of the 
world stigmatizes as superstitious, — that 
is the developments and the romance 
of the spiritual consciousness. And in 
conclusions it must also be said that he 
laboured for the sake of labour, that he 
loved beauty for its own sake and that he 
was busied with reality because reality is 
divine. At one time he remarked, "To 
give form to one's dreams, to give shape 
to one's fancy, to change one's ideas into 
images, to express one's self through a 
material that one makes lovely by mere 
treatment, to realize in this material the 
immaterial ideal of beauty — this is the 
pleasure of the artist. It is the most 
sensuous and most intellectual pleasure 
in the whole world," and, indeed, he might 
have added that it was, likewise, the most 



CONCLUSIONS 



spiritual pleasure in the wliole world. 
For the expression of one's self through 
the realization of the immaterial ideals 
of beauty in material form, indeed, that 
is the culminating purpose of the soul's 
existence. The soul's own vision of itself 
is the high ideal of aspiration ; aye, there 
is none that is higher. To touch deli- 
cately all the moods of life and express 
them in new modes and to finger with 
divine thoroughness all the ideals in their 
true nature, verily, this is the task and 
the joy of the rich in soul. The cardinal 
purposes of life are to be found in the 
soul's expression of its own potential- 
ities ; and the reading of every single life 
must be from this point of view. Thus 
Oscar Wilde must be seen in the relations 
that were true of him ; that is, he must be 
recognized as one who determined to read 
the meaning of life in the writing of his 
own soul in the personal experience. For 
this reason he could see neither good nor 

123 



CONCLUSIONS 



bad; he was aware only of tlie forms ot 
expression in tlie delicacy or tlie vulgarity 
they might assume. And vulgarity he 
thought of as the only vice. Everything 
was to be forgiven by the gods save vul- 
garity, — and vulgarity, he triumphantly 
asserted, was the conduct of others in the 
observation of the sins of the sinners. 
Badness is not bad; only unsuccessful 
badness is bad. Until his success Gari- 
baldi was a brigand ; until its success the 
revelation is the rebellion; until its sue-, 
cess it is treason. And so, in the depart- 
ment of ethics and aesthetics, failure in 
the propaganda of a new ideal inevitably 
means that the preacher is denounced and 
decried; aye, he may be socially ostra- 
cised, even persecuted. But let success 
crown his motives and he is praised as 
the deliverer in the hours of darkness, as 
the redeemer in the chaos of confused 
yisions. 

Fast is the time approaching when 
124 



CONCLUSIONS 



Oscar Wilde will be seen in liis true light, 
and when the world will draw new con- 
conclusions from the phenomena of his 
literature and his career. Then he will 
be seen in his own light and own lumin- 
osity. Then the harping critics, who love 
littleness wherever it is to be found and 
are blind to greatness because they have 
not the faculty of perception, will no 
longer be heard, and he whose life was 
one long sorrow, one uninterrupted ac- 
quaintance with pain, and the ending of 
whose life was in the pangs of deepest 
pain shall be divested of the environment 
of his personal sorrow and stand revealed 
in the glory of his vision and his genius. 
He will be seen as the sociologist among 
them, as the artist among them, as the 
prophet among them in his dramas, as 
the seer among them in his poetic songs. 
He will be recognized as the herald of 
new social orders, as the spokesman of a 
newer and far more inclusive social mes- 

J2S 



CONCLUSIONS 



sage. He will be regarded as all artists 
and poets should be regarded, — from 
without the pale of ethics and within the 
limitless circumference of aesthetics 
which becomes incarnate within them. 
Then will he be seen as the prophet of the 
greater dawn of things when man shall 
walk upon the face of the earth — a crea- 
ture of art and the follower, pure and 
simple, of the artistic impulse with vision 
ever fixed upon the company of artistic 
ideals. Personally he was an "Arbiter 
Elegantiarum" in the social fashions ; not 
alone that, however. He was, also and 
especially, the "Arbiter Elegantiarum'^ 
in intellectual and artistic fashions. 
Wherever he walked in the greatness of 
his days he was always the man of power 
in the insight which was his, the man of 
eloquence in the expression of the con- 
tents of that insight. No matter when 
or where he expressed himself, it was al- 
ways as the enthusiast and as the dreamer 

126 



CONCLUSIONS 



of dreams that are real, the dreams of the 
ideals that are to be true in the more glor- 
ious future of a greater to-morrow. His 
motives were the unconscious aspirations 
of multitudes; and since his day it has 
been the custom, both in the world of art 
and that of drama, to speak the truth 
about the evils of the day. He shifted 
drama from its purely historic bearings 
into the light of the present, when the 
drama forthshadows the life of the people 
as it is lived in the passing of the days. 
It was his initial effort that made the 
drama the moral censor of society and 
the merciless critic of the smallnesses of 
the age. 

And for this is he to be thanked ; since 
his time the whole message of art has been 
thoroughly renewed; indeed, it appears 
to have entirely reshaped its functions 
and the character of its intentions. It is 
to society what religion and the church 
are to the soul. More than that it is to 

127 



CONCLUSIONS 



society as tlie sublime dictator of true 
social ideals. The commanding element 
in all the work of Oscar Wilde, however, 
and which made his dramas so character- 
istically and intensely real, was the force 
of his personality. Throughout one finds 
in Oscar Wilde the critic, the moralist, 
the philosopher, the man of fashion and 
the man of the world. One finds in Oscar 
Wilde, also, the man of spiritual longing 
and intellectual sincerity — a rare combi- 
nation. It is much to be regretted that he 
did not have the full scope of opportunity. 
For had not misfortune overtaken him 
and robbed him of his powers of joy and 
sympathy with life it is certain that he 
would have given utterance to worlds of 
farther understanding in the lines of the 
poetry and in the framework of the 
dramas he would have composed. As it 
is, his dramas bear out the demand 
that he forced upon society of changing 
its standards of social opinion. Aristo- 

128 



CONCLUSIONS 



cratic himself, lie nevertheless assaulted 
that assembly of so-called aristocrats who 
live physically in sumptuousness, but 
who are devoid, utterly, of any intellec- 
tual or artistic outlook. He believed in 
the aristocracy of artists and poets and 
world-seers. He laboured for that end 
whereby should be combined the great 
forces of society and the greater forces of 
art. Now society rules, and uninstructed 
society, but when art is allowed to domi- 
nate, then society will be perfect and 
beautiful and all its faults shall have been 
made virtues in the transition, and all its 
limitations metamorphosed into splendid 
advantages and its narrow preoccupa- 
tions altered into gloriously large deal- 
ings with the future. And visions of the 
renewal instead of the ignorant preser- 
vation of culture shall dawn upon the so- 
cial sight. 

The intentions of Oscar Wilde were al- 
ways with the future; the same is to be 

129 



CONCLUSIONS 



said of his aspirations for society, and in 
one instance he remarks, "The past is of 
no importance. The present is of no im- 
portance. It is with the future that we 
have to deal. For the past is what man 
should not have been. The present is 
what man ought not to be. The future is 
what artists are." Already and in our 
very midst is the world of the future, 
prophesied of by the careers and the be- 
quests of the poets and the artists. And 
Oscar Wilde was an inhabitant of that 
future world. That is why the present 
world laid violent hands upon him, for 
it could not understand him, and the 
world always deals hard with that which 
it fails to understand. How far his vision 
extended into the future order of society ! 
He anticipated in his ideas the very aims 
of socialism, purified from politics and 
standing in the light of spirituality. He 
says, "When private property is abolished 
there will be no necessity for crime, no 

130 



CONCLUSIONS 



demand for it; it will cease to exist." 
And again, "Starvation, and not sin, is 
the parent of modern crime." And an- 
other saying of liis might be -.added, be- 
cause of the light it throws in this re- 
lation, "So completely has man's person- 
ality been absorbed by his possessions 
that the English law has always treated 
offences against a man's property with far 
more severity than offences against his 
person, and property is still the test of 
complete citizenship." What a careful 
summing-up of the status of the industrial 
age! What eloquent foretelling, as it 
were, is it also of what is to come, for 
socialism is the social condition for the 
future, a spiritual socialism wherein shall 
shine, as great human beaeonlights, the 
virtues of sacrifice and selfishness and all 
the virtues and advantages of the great 
human communal consciousness. Yes, it 
was in the future that Oscar Wilde lived ; 
and were it possible for him to be re- 

131 



CONCLUSIONS 



born and to re-live certainly, whenever 
the time of his birth and life, his message 
would deal with the future, because the 
vision of the future is always purer and 
more refined, as compared with the sordid 
realities with which the present is ever 
filled. Oscar Wilde always lived beyond 
the opinions and beyond the contents of 
the world as he saw it. He had become 
the avowed lover of a reality more spir- 
itual than the reality with which life is 
bound up in hopeless paradoxes and con- 
tradictions. It seems as if he were speak- 
ing much of himself, though perhaps un- 
consciously so, when he said, ^^There are 
two worlds. The one exists and is never 
talked about; it is called the real world 
because there is no neecj to talk about it 
in order to see it. The other is the world 
of art ; one must talk about that, because 
otherwise it would not exist.'' 

Ah! Indeed! Because he was an in- 
habitant of that world which is not talked 

132 



CONCLUSIONS 



about and which is difficult to see was 
Oscar Wilde so much misunderstood. But 
the great are the residents of that world 
and, "To be great is to be misunderstood.'' 
But we seem to see the soul of Oscar 
Wilde as caught up now into that world, 
living altogether there, freed from all 
the many bondages of this small world. 
And when the anguish of pain became 
most intense, death came to him, as it 
were, like the fiery chariot came unto 
the Prophet of old and he was carried 
up by the pure flame of his own soul into 
the region where immortality lives, be- 
cause there is the world of art, the region 
where joy reigns pure and boundless and 
where the vision of beauty is unending 
and ever intense, and ever — ever — and 
forever divine — for there is God! 



133 



aftettootD 



AFTERWOED 

In the instance of the poetic tempera- 
ment, greater than the personality of the 
man is the larger personality of the poet ; 
but, in the deepest sense, the man is the 
poet; at least this was true in the case 
of Oscar Wilde. To him the man and the 
poet blended indistinguishably ; and the 
beauty of the poet was that of the man, 
and vice versa. It is in this light that 
lone sees him ; and this is the true light in 
which he is properly and genuinely re- 
flected and in which his genius shines 
forth in its fullness. 

The room still stands in which he 
passed away; it is but a stone's throw 
from the Academie des Beaux Arts, but 
he is no longer within the mournfulness 
of that time when he dwelt in that room 
with his dying days. He has gone to the 
great Academie des Beaux Arts in the 

137. 



AFTERWOED 



real realm of art wliere death and ugli- 
ness cannot go, where all is beauty and 
truth and beautiful reality and where the 
great gods walk and speak with those 
who go to such Olympian heights. He is 
beyond all pain, resting within the 
shadow and the grandeur of his own 
manifested genius; and there no harsh- 
ness, and nothing unseemly, can touch 
him. There he stands apart in his own 
light above the censure and the blame of 
this small world. He has been caught up 
into the radiant world of art. 

^N'ow a monument is to be erected to 
his name; but all these long days since 
his passing away has he had a monument 
which was and is the appreciation of 
those who know and love and understand 
him. And this is a monument which time 
cannot' cause to decay ; it is an imperish- 
able monument. And he dwells also in 
the immortality of his personal illumina- 
tion, tov it was personal illuminatiou and 

138 



AFTERWORD 



not public applause that lie sought. His 
was an illuminated intellect and his was 
a soul delicate in its sensitive response 
to the stimulus of rich ideals. 

And now he lives in the company of 
those rich ideals. And he is now at 
peace, — ^joyous, luminous, silent peace. 



FINIS 



X39 



PSYCHIC CONTROL 

"A book of three hundred and forty pages of 
living truths." — Universal Republic. 

"A book that should interest a large class of 
readers who like research into the subtler forces 
of nature and the abtruse working mind and 
spirit." — Banner, Nashville, Tenn. 

"The author emphasises the need of a practical 
creed that shall make the soul conscious of real- 
ities which have heretofore been believed." — The 
Bookman. 

"The depths of the soul are touched by the 
apostleship of a newer philosophy." — The Times, 
Louisville, Ky. 

"The knowledge of what constitutes the im- 
mortal self of each animate and inanimate being 
is set forth." — Press, Pittsburgh, Pa. 

"Here we have a thoughtful elaboration of the 
principles generally taught in what we recognize 
as the new school of Philosophy." — The Public. 

\ "In his descriptive writings the author has 
struck the spiritual chord of the world's deepest 
philosophies" — Richard G. Badger, Esq., in Poet 
Lore. 

"As water purifies the physical instrument of 
the soul, so the mind is purified by adherence to 
the tenets of the individual conscience." — The 

Club Fellow. 

"This is a study of the mental and spiritual 
control through self-knowledge, and as such a con- 
tribution to the literature of New Thought." 
Democrat, Little Rock, Ark. 

"The knowledge of what constitutes the im- 
mortal soul of each animate and inanimate being 
is set forth in a way that leaves an indelible im- 
pression upon the mind.' — The Despatch, Phila- 
delphia, Pa. 

"Those who have a fancy for the occult will 
be interested in 'Psychic Control Through Self 
Kxiovi\tdgQ*J^unday States, Ne w_Orle ans, La. 



PSYCHIC CONTROL 

* "An earnest attempt to present a system of 
thought and a method for the development of the 
spiritual iaculties."— Inter-Ocean, Chicago, 111. 

"Mr. Kenilworth's work is fertile in thought- 
'fulness of the subjects treated, and cannot fail 
of being highly commended by the constantly- 
increasing investigators of the psychic philosophy." 
Courier, Boston, Mass. 

"Walter Winston Kenilworth emphasises the 
need of a practical creed and system of self- 
knowledge."P/am-Z)^a/^r, Cleveland O. 

One of the most important of recent contri- 
butions to the metaphysical literature of the New 
Thought, and emphasizes the need of a practical 
creed founded on a better understanding of the 
spiritual self." — Press, Philadelphia, Pa. 

"It is doubtless a very fine thing; like a star, 
the light of which has not yet reached the earth, 
the multitude cannot appreciate it." — News and 
Courier, Charleston, S. C. 

"This book is a tribute to the spirit of the 
age, a spirit of better values, higher sympathies, 
a deeper recognition of death and a more ex- 
tensive spiritual perspective." — American, Balti- 
more. 

"The great principal which has been emphasized 
is that morality is the medium through which the 
deepest psychic and spiritual consciousness is 
obtained." — Age-Herald, Birmingham, Ala. 

"The spiritual consciousness which corresponds 
with spiritual knowledge is shown to be intimately 
identified with a moral consciousness."— Tn^ww^, 
Minneapolis, Minn. 

"Psychic Control Through Self-Knowledge^ 
emphasizes the need of a practical creed and 
system of self-knowledge,"— P/am-D^a/(?r, Cleve- 
land, Ohio. ' 

"New religions, new systems of thought, new 
systems of philosophy are turning the tide of 
spiritual unrest from X\i^ orthoraoxy of past 
ages* Th9 profound dissoveries of modern $ci« 



PSYCHIC CONTROl. 

" ' ' ' 1— » 

strikes the keynote of his work — Faith is giving 
way to knowledge." — The Herald, New York. 

"The author of this book writes the lines of 
what is called *new philosophy.' He takes a broad 
view of the problems of life and shows the in- 
timate connection between the spiritual connection 
which corresponds with spiritual knowledge and 
a moral consciousness. The book is interesting 
and instructive." — Metaphysical Magazine. 

"The object is to show that realization of the 
spirit within is the goal of spiritual effort, psychic 
control is the direct method of approach and mor- 
ality is the medium through which the deepest 
psychic and a spiritual consciousness is evolved.'* 
Chronicle^ San Francisco. 

"How we can gain psychic control through self- 
knowledge is the theme here exploited. Mr. Ken- 
ilworth argues that self-knowledge must be estab- 
lished in consciousness, Man has in himself a 
reservoir of latent energy upon which he is at 
liberty to draw, but which he puts to slight ac- 
count. ^ Mr. Kenilworth would help man to it's 
use." — Detroit Free Press. 

"This is a psychological and philosophical study, 
rrhe author departs from the orthodox conceptions 
of religion and the soul's relation to God. I£ 
you are orthodox and wish so to remain, let the 
volume alone. If you believe faith is giving away 
to knowledge, here's a book you want." — News, 
Galveston, Texas. 

"The author has taken Solon's dictum 'Know 
Thyself, as his theme, but has handled it in a 
manner which would have been impossible in the 
days of the Greek philosophers. — It is a call to in- 
dividualism as against the modern socialistic 
spirit." — Book News Monthly. 

"The book is one of an increasing number of 
works showing the tendency to break away from 
the old established forms of theology, to teach 
mankind to become conscious of his soul and to 
take issue with the old orthodox assertion 'be- 
lieve and ye shall be sa,y^d,"^^America7t, New 
lYork. 5 



PSYCHIC CONTROL 

^■■■l ■— ■■■■ M —. -. ■■■—I.. .1 ^1 - — -■'—' "■ ■■■ ^^■ .—■■ - ■■ 

"The purpose of this excellent book is not to 
teach control of others, but control of self; and 
it deals with principles rather than methods. The 
value of this book is far beyond that of mere 'psy- 
chic' uses of the mind. 'The Birthright of the 
Sour is a chapter that well represents the refresh- 
ing energy of thought which constitutes the help- 
ful philosophy of this book." — Bible Review. 

"There is so much fakery and quackery beingj 
laid before ignorant and unsuspecting readers 
these days under the titles of 'psychic' this and 
'psychic' that, that the very name of this book 
gives rise to dark suspicions in the mind of the 
reader. And yet there is no quackery evident in 
this volume. It is apparently the work of an 
earnest and sincere man." — Telegraph, Phila- 
delphia, Pa. 

"He has made an extremely readable book, in 
which the influence both of theosophy and of 
new thought is visible." — Globe, Boston Mass. 

"This volume is the result of deep research, 
much study, an indefinite amount of thought, 
coupled with a primary understanding of the sub- 
ject acquired through years of labor. It is above 
else a book for the thinker, a volume that must 
be studied and analyzed before it's true worth be- 
comes manifest." — The Reporter, Waterloo, Iowa. 

"A very lucid exposition of the theory of evo- 
lution, of spiritual truths, and the attainment of 
the higher self. The author sees clearly the 
need of the individual for a practical creed and a 
more definite knowledge of soul forces. It is a 
plea for the consciousness of soul and a spiritual 
understanding of self. It is a^well written and 
clear analysis of a subject that is steadily gaining 
in interest." — Miscellaneous. 

"A philosophical work of great value, teaching 
how to become conscious of one's soul, and by 
cultivating morality and things spiritual, to de- 
velope all the highest capablities of self. Gently 
but firmly he leads the reader up the steps of 
self-knowledge. To the mind who strives to 
understand, there first comes inspiration, and then. 



PSYCHIC CONTROL ^ 

an all pervading peace. No one should attempt 
to study more than one chapter at a sitting, for 
the pages are literally packed with meaning, which 
is best assimilated by degrees. The word paint- 
ing is rarely beautiful." — The Times-Union, KU 
bany, N. Y. 

*Table-turning, thought reading, crystal gazing, 
clairvoyance, ghost-raising and such like diver- 
sions are at present so much in favor with the 
frivolous that it may be proper to offer a word 
of warning about Mr. Walter Winston Kenil- 
worth's book. Psychic Control Through Self- 
Knowledge, and those who hope to find any in- 
formation here about the transference of thoughts 
or the shifting of furniture will be grievously dis- 
appointed. By psychic control Mr. KenilwortK 
means the control of desires with the amelioration 
of conduct and the refinement of physical and 
mental vibration." — The Evening Sun, New York. 

^ 'This is a very interesting, instructive and up- 
lifting work, written in the author's well known 
style. All will find some new truth in this book, 
and there are none but whom will receive in- 
struction and benefit." — Voice of the Magi. 

"In the author's power to perceive relations, to 
j?rasp the occult truth embodied in an object or a 
phenomenon, to recognize truths pertaining to the 
unseen realm and to the inner life, and to lay the 
same before others with clearness, originality and 
convincing power, one is continually reminded of 
Emerson. One closes it marveling at the heights 
which a soul has reached that can put forth a 
work like this." — ^L. Frances Este§ v^ The OC' 
cidenU 



Xi r>i 



SEP ■ 6 1912 




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